National Cancer CNS Day shines spotlight on vital colleagues who support cancer patients
Today, Wednesday 26 April, is National Cancer Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) Day.
Cancer CNS workers are highly specialised, experienced nurses who play a vital role in the cancer workforce, using their training to build a sense of trust, honesty and openness with their patients in order to support them in the best possible way.
Here at UHDB, we have 60 CNS colleagues who are taking care of patients and their families who are living with cancer and undergoing treatment. We spoke to Kerry Pape, Lead Cancer Nurse Manager, about what their role involves and why it is important to shine a spotlight on these valued colleagues on National Cancer CNS Day:
Kerry explained: "Their role is incredibly important to those who are living with cancer, and their loved ones, to ensure they get the care and support they need so I think awareness days like today play a key role in shining a spotlight on them and recognising the valuable work they do.
"In this job no two days are the same, no two patients are the same and no two patients' needs are the same either so our CNS colleagues are really good at assessing what that patient needs or wants. You have to be able to support that patient through that pathway in the best way possible, which can sometimes be challenging and emotional, but also very rewarding."
Kerry first started her career as a Surgical Nurse and after embarking on a course about how to care for patients receiving end of life care and their families, realised that she wanted to do more to support cancer patients.
She said: "In the early 1990s, a lot of the difficult conversations would be left to the doctors and what the course taught me was that as a nurse I also had the ability to do that. It made me want to do something more to support patients."
Kerry said she experienced two different patient journeys that inspired how she progressed in her career to becoming a Cancer CNS; one that allowed her to consider the patient perspective and another that showed her the impact cancer can have on a patient's family and loved ones.
She said: "Because I was working on a surgical ward, I would only see patients when they came into surgery and not beforehand and as soon as they were given their results their whole attitude would change because this big weight had been lifted off their shoulders.
"The other thing that struck me was a difficult experience I had as a newly qualified nurse. There was a man in his early 40s who came in and was diagnosed with cancer. I sat down with the registrar and his wife as he was told the difficult news and a few months later, I happened to see the patient's wife and asked how he was, and despite their hopes to have more time together, he had sadly died.
"Both of those experiences really resonated with me as a nurse and I wished I could have done more, so as I grew into my nursing career, I knew that’s what I wanted to do."
Throughout her career, Kerry has worked in a variety of roles, including cancer genetics, familial cancer and palliative care. In her current role as Lead Cancer Nurse, Kerry works with other CNS colleagues and clinicians to support cancer patients across Staffordshire and Derbyshire at what is a difficult time for them, something which has given her a lot of job satisfaction.
She said: "Any Cancer CNS will tell you that there is sadness in this job, we can't change the inevitable outcome for some patients and that can be hard, but as long as we do what we can that is the main thing. You tend to find that the patients we care for are so grateful for the smallest of things and witnessing the difference you have made to someone and getting to call that your job, there isn’t anything like it."
Kerry said the nature of medicine means that cancer is now a much more longer-term condition than it once was with people able to live longer due to the treatments available to them and that while there is sadness doing the role of a Cancer CNS, it is an incredible career to pursue.
"The progression of medicine and healthcare since I started out had progressed so much and it means the treatments and care we can offer to those with cancer is much more vast. We now have more immunotherapies and targeted treatments for tumour sites that previously had no treatments which means cancer patients can receive treatment, live well and live longer."